Captain Ricky Ponting has backed calls for an in-depth review of the state of Australian cricket following his side's 3-1 Ashes defeat.
Ponting, who lost the urn for the third time as captain, believes the depth of Australian cricket has weakened in recent years to precipitate their fall from grace.
The best team in all formats of the game for the best part of two decades, Australia's dramatic slump has seen them fail to win any series since their tour of New Zealand last March.
The one-sided nature of their defeat against England has brought that decline into sharp focus, and Ponting acknowledges a thorough analysis of cricket Down Under is now required.
"There is a review after every season, of which I'm always a big part," Ponting wrote in his column in the Australian. "I understand there will be a lot more involved in the review this time around and rightly so.
"The performance of the elite team over the past few weeks has been very disappointing. But I think it's important we look a fair bit deeper into Australian cricket than just the last couple of weeks."
Ponting expects every level of the game will come under scrutiny.
"We've got to look further back to club cricket and junior cricket to find out what has caused us to end up in this position," he added.
"I think the whole structure of Australian cricket needs looking at. We've got to look at our state cricket. I'm not sure that is as strong as we need it to be. We've got to look at the reasons why.
"There are a lot of things we can look at, but right at the moment it appears as though we're not producing enough high-quality Test cricketers."
